Thursday, July 4, 2013

Window on Eurasia: Umarov’s Threat to Sochi Will Lead Moscow to ‘Tighten the Screws’ in North Caucasus, Experts Say

Paul
Goble

Staunton, July 4 – Doku Umarov’s
threat to stage a terrorist attack against the Sochi Olympiad next year is
likely to become the occasion for more “tightening of the screws” in the North
Caucasus by Moscow and its force structures there in the coming months,
according to experts surveyed by the Kavkaz-uzel.ru news agency.

Umarov, the self-proclaimed leader of
the Caucasus Imamate, this week said on a widely disseminated video tape that
he was ending his “moratorium” on attacks against Russians that he declared on
February 2, 2012, and would now focus the attention of his forces on disrupting
the Sochi Olympics.

As Kavkaz-uzel.ru points out today,
it is not clear how much authority Umarov has or how many people he may control
or even if he is still alive, but however that may be, the news agency says,
the number of victims of armed conflict in the North Caucasus “more than
doubled” between April and May of this year (kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/226570/).

Consequently,
the news agency says, one has to take the underground leader’s threats
seriously, and it turned to three experts for their assessment of what Doku
Umarov’s words may mean and how they are likely to affect Russian policy in the
North Caucasus in the seven months before the Sochi Games are scheduled to
begin.

Aleksey
Malashenko, a specialist on Islam at the Carnegie Center in Moscow, says that
no one will know whether Umarov can make good on his threats “until the Olympic
Games are concluded.”His words this
week may be simply a “PR” action but they will have an impact on those thinking
about attending the competition and also on Russian force structures.

The
former will undoubtedly be frightened, the expert says, and the latter “will
use” his words in order to “’tighten the screws’ around the Olympiad in this
region.”But it is important to
remember, Malashenko adds, that “the main threat comes not from Doku Umarov …
but from terrorists acting individually.”

That
makes the task of the Russian siloviki much more difficult.It is relatively easy to track “any organization”
than to identify and block “amateur terrorists” as the recent terrorist
incident at the Boston Marathon shows.Consequently,
he concludes, no one can “guarantee [absolute] security” at Sochi.

Feliks Tsokov, the former head of the
specially important crimes section of the Russian Investigation Committee of
the North Caucasus Federal District, tells Kavkaz-Uzel.ru that the Caucasus
Imamate is “’a geopolitical project of the US and the West’ directed against
the Russian Federation in order to destroy its [territorial] integrity.” And
consequently, “I do not consider Umarov an independent figure” but someone who
is part of that effort.

Umarov’s
words this week, he suggests, are a provocation given that in the past,
terrorists like Basayev have not telegraphed their intentions in advance but
rather taken credit for attacks only after they occur. But his threats must be
countered by the siloviki because if they are not, Umarov’s declaration “can
become a catalyst of destructive processes” within the country.

Tsokov adds that serious shortcomings in the
work of Russian security forces do not allow anyone to predict that they will
be able to provide real security for events “of such an extent as the 2014
Olympiad” and says that “either security must be guaranteed or the Games must
be called off.”

A
third expert interviewed by Kvkaz-uzel.ru, Orkhan Dzhemal, a commentator for “Izvestiya,”
says that “Umarov really can make good on his threats” and is likely to try
because in the past, he “has shown that he keeps his word.” And that poses real
challenges to the Russian authorities.

According
to Dzhemal, the recent use of carrots as well as sticks by the federal
authorities has led to the departure of many fighters from the ranks of the
militants, the further criminalization of militant organizations, and a decline
in the authority these groups enjoy in the population.

Umarov’s
announcement, he suggests, thus represents an effort bythe militant leader to recover authority by
adopting a clear ideological position. The response of the authorities is
likely to determine whether he succeeds. Any “witch hunts” by the siloviki,
Dzhemal says, will only help him in this.

And
he points to the difference between the North Caucasus and the Middle Volga to
make his point. In the North Caucasus, repressive measures by the state are
driving many into the Salafi underground, but in the Middle Volga, where they
are many Salafis in the population, there has been little repression and
consequently, few people have joined underground groups.

If
Moscow orders repressive measures in the Middle Volga, Dzhemal suggests, that will
change, and the Russian authorities will face exactly the problem there they say
the most fearand most oppose.

Enver Kisriyev, an expert at the Caucasus Center of
Civilizational and Regional Research of the Moscow Institute of Africa, says that
threats to stage a terrorist attack on Sochi are useful to the underground,
especially in neighboring Chechnya, but he adds that in his view, Umarov
himself may no longer be among the living, although he remains a symbol of
resistance.

But
whatever and whoever lies behind the recent threats, he says, “a certain
movement threatening the conduct of the games can emerge become the Olympiad,”
and that is something that Moscow and the world must take completely seriously.

Kavkaz-uzel.ru
cites two other comments about Umarov’s threat. Russia’s Natonal Anti-Terrorist
Committee said on its own website yesterday that “particular attention is being
devoted” to the possibility of attacks against Sochi. And Chechen leader Raman
Kadyrov said that “Umarov will be killed before the 2014 Olympiad.”